


The Nephilim

by gyromitra



Series: The Bureau [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Complicated Relationships, Eldritch Pregnancy, Horror, Inspired by B.P.R.D. / Hellboy, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2019-10-21 07:43:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17638652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyromitra/pseuds/gyromitra
Summary: And when the rope had rotted through and let her fall to the ground, they buried her and her wretched spawn between the holy roots.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one is going to be shorter (EDIT: turned out, it's not really). IF I write more of this AU, the stories will be sorted chronologically in the series. Nephilim could be seen as a 'sidequest'. Anyway, enjoy (or not :D)

**Later**

  
In the fields, Gabriel seeks out the harrowing radiance of being that is Jack, and the singing language of discordant melodies leads him through the maze of the cornstalks. In his dreams, the frightful visage is welcoming, and he fails to notice the tendrils of greedy darkness clinging to his own form.

When he wakes, he remembers not the words of the warning.

 

**Now**

  
"I don't like it. Not one bit," Jack raises his head from the map spread on the hood of the car. "Thirty miles from the closest bus line, over fifty miles to the closest functioning train station via ferry. Fuck it."

"You can change your mind," Gabriel toys with the lighter in his hand, flips its lid off and on continuously. Something to keep busy.

"Do you want me to change my fucking mind now?" Jack studies him for several seconds and Gabriel shakes his head. "Yeah, didn't think so. Fuck."

"If you really think it could be that bad we can wait for reinforcements," Gabriel suggests even if it was him who was against calling anyone. But Jack is tense - anxiously mashes together his lips - his brows drawn together, and in the air lingers a certain crisp aura of anticipation as if whatever awaits at their destination is aware of them. Conifer trees loom over the dirt road on both sides of the car.

"No. We can't," Jack folds the map back and puts it in the front pocket of his hoodie. "We have to check it. They'd found only the girl. Fuck," he adds, eyeing the lighter Gabriel still plays with absentmindedly.

"You'll have to find another one."

"Fuck you," Jack mutters without any real emotion behind the words and slams the door as he seats himself back in the car. "What are you waiting for?"

"That bad?" Gabriel could get angry at the outburst but he understands now better than ever before, the things Jack sees and no-one else does.

Jack shifts, then shakes his head as Gabriel starts the engine. The car rolls down the road alongside the weathered wooden poles with electric wire stretched between them.

"It's whispers on the wind. Something is here, and it's crying," Jack mulls over the answer. "I can't tell. It's old. And then it's not. It's everywhere."

Gabriel takes one hand off the steering wheel and puts it on Jack's thigh, it's comfortingly real and corporeal, warm even through the leather of the glove. A blessing. Something he never imagined he would have back.

"You're going to be okay?"

"I have to be," Jack sighs and covers Gabriel's hand with his, slowly twines their fingers together. "I told you, I hate..." The word is almost cut in half by a sharp intake of air. "Fuck."

"What is it?"

"She's in the car with us."

"Who?" Gabriel tries not to sound alarmed and glances into rear-view mirror only to see the empty seats, the stretch of the road behind them, and Jack's focused gaze.

"The girl. Why is she...? Oh, fuck, they found it. They took it. Fuck, fuck, fuck, it's there," Jack frantically speaks, his fingers clench around Gabriel's. "It's there and..."

Something big and dark runs in front of the car. Gabriel tries to slam the brakes. The metal groans around him in the split second before the inertia throws him forward, and the airbag pushes back.

The ringing in his ears slowly settles as the pain becomes apparent. Gabriel rolls his head to the side. A lumbering shape stops by the window and lowers its head to look at him. A deer. Amber eyes blink, all of them, too many of them, its snout is covered in eyes, and its antlers are black and curled into branching spirals.

It snorts and leans away, and disappears into the blackness of his fading vision.

"Speak not in the voice of angels," a woman speaks.

"Speak not of the singing whispers," another one adds.

"Suffer not the existence of the angel," a girl's voice.


	2. Chapter 2

The seat next to him is empty; the tan leather is stained by splatters of blood - the amount is moderate and the pattern isn't dynamic. Gabriel unbuckles the seatbelt and swings the door open. His chest is flaring up in dull pain as he pushes himself out of the car and stands on unsteady legs.

The splatters of blood alongside the footprints in the dirt continue on further down the road. There is no sign of the animal they had hit - no tracks.

"Shit," Gabriel mutters looking forward. The road seems to have no end and the light has the quality of the moment just before the sun plunges below the horizon and night comes without any warning. "Shit," he repeats when his phone (the glass cracked but still working) shows no signal.

The trunk gives up after he bashes it for the third time. He takes out the spare tire and the tools, pries open the false bottom with the crowbar, and rummages through the bag hidden there.

Logic and common sense would dictate going back and getting help but logic and common sense hardly ever applied in their line of work – and Jack is somewhere out there. Gabriel puts on the holster and grabs the torch, and after some consideration slings the whole bag over his arm wincing when his shoulder and ribs protest under the weight.

The flashlight illuminates the road, and Gabriel idly notices imprints left by some heavy equipment, a tractor most probably judging by the depth and the spacing of the tracks. The night comes almost as unannounced as he had expected it, and the sky above him becomes painted with swaths of stars. It would be beautiful if not for the oppressive aura of urgency pressing him on and darkness dispersed only by the light held in his hand.

Gabriel follows the drops of blood on the sand. The forest is unnaturally quiet, and the occasional crack of branches and rustle of leaves have him glancing to the side. And Jack is somewhere out there alone only because Gabriel allowed himself to be selfish – to assuage his guilt this one time – with no right to ask for help from the one person that had every reason to refuse him but would never do so.

He tries to keep to the grassy roadside where the ground is firmer and easier to walk on - to not tread on the footprints left by Jack. At least he hopes they are Jack's, and that maybe he might be able to catch up.

Without any warning, the forest gives way to a small clearing on the left with a house hidden completely behind the treeline until he makes a turn. A girl runs inside, into the light coming from the doorway, calling out something that sounds like 'momma'.

Gabriel swings the flashlight around, the footprints swerve left and so does he, looking now at a silhouette of a woman standing on the threshold of the drab house with wood and bricks peeking from underneath the crumbling plaster.

She is in her thirties or forties, with chestnut hair pinned up in a messy bun and big gaudy golden clips on her ears. The girl clings to her side. He cannot comprehend any of the hurried words out of her mouth as she grabs his arm and pulls him inside.

"I can't understand you."

She forcefully sits him down by a table covered with a faded and soiled oilcloth. The air smells of mold and dried herbs.

"You. Hurt," the woman turns and tells something to the girl who nods, and then runs into another room.

"No," Gabriel shakes his head and reaches to his pocket, shows her his phone. "I need a phone. To make a call."

"No. No telephone. No work here," her accent is heavy. "Radio yes. No television."

Gabriel sighs.

"I'm looking for someone. A man. With white hair. He's hurt." The woman looks at him quizzically. Gabriel points to his head, and then to the oilcloth. "Did you see him?"

"White head. Yes. He go. Hour, two." He wants to thank her and braces himself to stand up when the girl returns with an old woman whose lips curl into her mouth. She puts a glass of foul-smelling liquid - alcohol - in front of him. "Drink. Pain good." Three pairs of eyes darker than they should really be bore into him. "Gift. Pain good."

Slowly, Gabriel takes the glass and gulps down its contents. Bitter alcohol tasting more like herbal concoction than anything else burns his throat.

"Go. Now," the woman urges as all three of them escort him outside, to the road. An hour or two, he might be still able to catch up with Jack before he reaches the village.

"In the end, you will choose wrong, slayer of angels," the girl's voice rings clear in his ears. Gabriel turns. The house is now dilapidated - broken windows, the door hanging off the hinges, the roof caved in. The light of his torch sweeps around and lands on the hulking deer with spirals in its antlers and multitude of glowing eyes.

It almost gives him a nod, and stately returns into the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm wringing out the creative burst so... :D


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. I figured out why I had so much trouble with it: I tried to put too much in one chapter and that resulted in me having problems with actually writing what I had conceptualized. So, now, it's 4 parts. Slight tw for animal death - but I think the general warnings cover it.
> 
> If You are one of the people who like mood music, here is for your consideration: ['That Creepy Slav Feel'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBI2aikA0LM) or ['That Eldritch Feel'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45LKV8irGzA).

The silence surrounding Gabriel rings unbroken except for the subdued by grass and sand sound of his own footsteps – and his labored breaths curling in white puffs of condensation. The chill penetrates through his shirt and jacket and settles on his skin. His vision tunnels and swims, almost like looking through half of a kaleidoscope where strange shapes form and flit at the edges of the sight.

No, he’s mistaken, there is something, some kind of whispers on the wind, a ceaseless murmur and rustle of many voices calling out with no sound punctuated by single hummed notes of a simple broken melody, each sound far too apart to tell what it is supposed to be.

The light of the torch sways with each step and shadows dance between the trunks of dense conifer trees with odd interrupted quality of praxinoscope with imperfect mirrors. Glowing points of reflective eyes stare him down from the darkness and disappear as soon as he pays attention to them.

The strange numbness Gabriel is thankful for tingles in his muscles and weighs down his body, grounds him in his task as he follows tracks in the sand and looks out for the occasional drop of black liquid he knows to be blood. Jack’s blood.

Time does not exist. Gabriel cannot recollect if there ever was a moment in his life when he was not walking down the dirt road in the middle of the forest with the singular focus on the task at hand.

The instant the trees part comes unexpected and the circle of his light reveals buildings not unlike the one earlier but intact and inhabited. On his right stands a tall wooden cross with a small picket fence around it – the wood darkened by the elements – and faded plastic flowers surrounding a broken colored glass candle holder put down on the ground. Beyond it, fields of what he suspects to be ripe wheat spoiling stretching far into the night.

Slowly, Gabriel turns around. Fenced-in yard, two houses – one two-story, the other squatting slightly in the back. And the barn, the shape of it hardly discernible in the gloom on the backdrop of darkness – the sort of darkness that can only be experienced in rural places remote from big cities.

He approaches the battered chain-link fence. The rust on it flows down the wires, but Gabriel is sure it is only his overactive imagination acting up. The gate swings with an ear-splitting screech grating on his mind and then stops, he has to kick it to force it open wide enough to pass comfortably through. The canvas of the bag on his shoulder snags lightly on the corner of the fence.

The doghouse in the far corner of the yard seems unoccupied. Gabriel follows the glint of the chain with his light until something looking like a bundle of rags catches his attention. A dead dog, probably part-Alsatian crossed with some other mongrel but he could be wrong about that. It has been lying here for some time now but the decomposition has not set in yet even if rationally it should have. The dried marks on its maw suggest it had frothed at the mouth before its demise, probably asphyxiated itself on the chain trying to escape whatever was – is – in the barn. It has to be in the barn – it’s always the barn.

Gabriel turns to the first house and approaches it with caution. The door, ajar, looks too modern and out of place when compared to the building itself. To the side, desiccated apples spill from a knocked over metal bucket. He idly notices dried maggots on the surrounding ground.

He steps inside and flicks the light switch by the door. The lights come on with a delay. If he had expected anyone to be still alive and well, the clothes and the tools – testaments to everyday lives of the inhabitants of the house – would look mundane. Now, they unsettle him, how they were discarded at once. How there, on the floor in front of him, lie some kid’s toys.

The back entrance is wide open. Through it, the barn looms.

Gabriel stops on the threshold and drops the bag. Crouches down and unzips it. The Remington feels good in his hand; he checks the magazine and flips the safety down. With one deeper breath and the rifle braced against his shoulder, he creeps closer to the wooden building. Two barrels and one big metal canister lean against its wall.

The gate is missing, Gabriel realizes, and inside impenetrable darkness waits – impenetrable save for the silhouette of Jack’s back. With his head bowed Jack is kneeling on the floor, swaying slightly forward and back, and the broken melody is coming from him – the other voices from everywhere around. His arms are wrapped in front of him as if he is holding something to his chest. Trying to protect it.

Gabriel is sure whatever concoction the women gave him before – it is the only thing saving him from having his brain bleed out through his nose.

He steps into the darkness.


End file.
